India has expressed its strong protest against China over a new map that lays claim to Indian territory, further straining the already tense relationship between the two Asian giants.
Following reports in the Indian media, New Delhi lodged the protest after Beijing released an official “standard map” that shows the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh and the Aksai Chin plateau as part of Chinese territory.
China claims Arunachal Pradesh in the eastern Himalayas as part of southern Tibet. In April, China had released a map renaming 11 places in the state as part of “Zangnan,” or southern Tibet in Chinese. Aksai Chin, on the other hand, is a disputed plateau in the western Himalayas claimed by India but controlled by China.
“We have today lodged a strong protest through diplomatic channels with the Chinese side on the so-called 2023 ‘standard map’ of China that lays claim to India’s territory,” said the spokesperson of the Indian foreign ministry. “We reject these claims as they have no basis. Such steps by the Chinese side only complicate the resolution of the boundary question,” he added.
Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar also dismissed China’s territorial claims, stating, “Making absurd claims on India’s territory does not make it China’s territory.”
The protest comes shortly after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi raised concerns about the stand-off on the disputed Himalayan frontier during a conversation with China’s President Xi Jinping at the BRICS summit in Johannesburg.
Relations between the two neighboring countries have deteriorated since a clash between soldiers in the Himalayas in June 2020 resulted in the death of 20 Indian soldiers and four Chinese troops. While the situation has been relatively calm since then, tensions remain in certain areas, with both sides still deploying tens of thousands of soldiers along the western Himalayan frontier.